This paper contributes towards the growing debate concerning the world distribution of income and its evolution over that past three to four decades. Our methodological approach is twofold. First, we formally test for the number of modes in a cross-sectional analysis where each country is...

The United Nations declared halving the number of poor people by 2015 as the first of their eight Millennium Development Goals. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is often seen as one instrument towards this goal because of its ability to stimulate economic growth trickling down to the poor....

In this paper, we define a new class of richness measures. In contrast to the often used headcount, these new measures are sensitive to changes in rich person's income and therefore allow for a more sophisticated analysis of richness. We demonstrate the application of these new measures to...

In this paper, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of poverty from Polish parents to their children through children´s educational attainment during the transition process of the 1990s. The relationship between family background and education is investigated using an ordered probit...

In this paper, the relationship between the degree of centralisation and the distributive outcomes in European schemes of social assistance is investigated. For this purpose, a scheme of classification suitable for grouping the EU15 schemes except for Luxembourg according to features related to...

This paper analyses the duration of child poverty in Germany. In our sample, we observe the entire income history from the individuals' birth to their coming of age at age 18. Therefor we are able to analyze dynamics in and out of poverty for the entire population of children, wether they become...

Many older US households have done little or no planning for retirement, and there is a substantial population that seems to undersave for retirement. Of particular concern is the relative position of older women, who are more vulnerable to old-age poverty due to their longer longevity. This...

Based on a case study of two Moldovan regions, the paper challenges the favourable assessment of recently established peasant farms in a World Bank study by LERMAN et al. (1998). The main arguments in favour of a more critical view of the results of land privatisation and farm restructuring are...

Dieser Beitrag diskutiert, warum wir künftig mit einem Anstieg der Alterarmut in Deutschland rechnen müssen. Trotz schwieriger Datenlage lassen sich bereits heute klare Anzeichen dafür erkennen, die im Zusammenspiel der Grundprinzipien des deutschen Rentensystems, vergangener Rentenreformen...

Global deregulation of current and capital account is often touted as successful means to reduce poverty and inequality. On the face of it, though, the evidence does not support this claim. Rising intra-country inequality is widespread, income inequality between countries grows, the absolute...